Italian Byzantine Style Painter, ca.1290-1348 Ambrogio Lorenzetti (or Ambruogio Laurati; c. 1290 ?C June 9, 1348) was an Italian painter of the Sienese school. He was active between approximately from 1317 to 1348. His elder brother was the painter Pietro Lorenzetti. His work shows the influence of Simone Martini, although more naturalistic. The earliest dated work of the Sienese painter is a Madonna and Child (1319, Museo Diocesano, San Casciano). His presence was documented in Florentine up until 1321. He would return there after spending a number of years in Siena. The frescoes on the walls of the Hall of the Nine (Sala dei Nove) or Hall of the Peace (Sala della Pace) in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena are one of the masterworks of early renaissance secular painting. The "nine" was the oligarchal assembly of guild and monetary interests that governed the republic. Three walls are painted with frescoes consisting of a large assembly of allegorical figures of virtues in the Allegory of Good Government . In the other two facing panels, Ambrogio weaves panoramic visions of Effects of Good Government on Town and Country, and Allegory of Bad Government and its Effects on Town and Country (also called "Ill-governed Town and Country"). The better preserved "well-governed town and country" is an unrivaled pictorial encyclopedia of incidents in a peaceful medieval "borgo" and countryside. The first evidence of the existence of the hourglass can be found in one of his paintings. Like his brother, he is believed to have died of bubonic plague 1348. Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of Lorenzetti in his Lives.  Related Paintings of Ambrogio Lorenzetti :. | Altarpiece of St Proculus | Allegory of Good Government | Scenes of the Life of St Nicholas | Nuring Madonna (mk08) | Suckling Madonna |
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BRUEGHEL, Pieter the Younger
Flemish painter (b. 1564, Bruxelles, d. 1638, Antwerp). Pieter Brueghel the Younger was the oldest son of the famous sixteenth-century Netherlandish painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder (known as "Peasant Brueghel") and Mayken Coecke van Aelst. His father died in 1569, when Pieter the younger was only five years old. Then, following the death of his mother in 1578, Pieter, along with his brother Jan Brueghel the Elder ("Velvet Brueghel") and sister Marie, went to live with their grandmother Mayken Verhulst (widow of Pieter Coecke van Aelst). She was an artist in her own right, and according to Carel van Mander, possibly the first teacher of the two sons. The family moved to Antwerp sometime after 1578 and Pieter possibly entered the studio of the landscape painter Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1607). In the 1584/1585 registers of Guild of Saint Luke, "Peeter Brugel" is listed as an independent master. On November 5, 1588 he married Elisabeth Goddelet, and the couple had seven children. He painted landscapes, religious subjects and fantasy paintings. For this last category he often made use of fire and grotesque figures, leading to his nickname "Hell Brueghel". Apart from these paintings of his own invention, Pieter Brueghel the Younger also copied the works his father had created by using a technique called pouncing. His genre paintings of peasants lack Pieter the Elder's subtlety and humanism, and emphasize the picturesque.
Jan van Huijsum
also spelled Huijsum, (April 15, 1682, Amsterdam - February 8, 1749, Amsterdam) was a Dutch painter. He was the brother of Jacob van Huysum, the son of the flower painter Justus van Huysum, and the grandson of Jan van Huysum I, who is said to have been expeditious in decorating doorways, screens and vases. A picture by Justus is preserved in the gallery of Brunswick, representing "Orpheus and the Beasts in a wooded landscape", and here we have some explanation of his son's fondness for landscapes of a conventional and Arcadian kind; for Jan van Huysum, though skilled as a painter of still life, believed himself to possess the genius of a landscape painter. Half his pictures in public galleries are landscapes, views of imaginary lakes and harbours with impossible ruins and classic edifices, and woods of tall and motionless trees-the whole very glossy and smooth, and entirely lifeless. The earliest dated work of this kind is that of 1717, in the Louvre, a grove with maidens culling flowers near a tomb, ruins of a portico, and a distant palace on the shores of a lake bounded by mountains. Some of the finest of van Huysum's fruit and flower pieces have been in English private collections: those of 1723 in the earl of Ellesmere's gallery, others of 1730-1732 in the collections of Hope and Ashburton. One of the best examples is now in the National Gallery, London (1736-1737). No public museum has finer and more numerous specimens than the Louvre, which boasts of four landscapes and six panels with still life; then come Berlin and Amsterdam with four fruit and flower pieces; then St Petersburg, Munich, Hanover, Dresden, the Hague, Brunswick, Vienna, Carlsruhe, Boston and Copenhagen.
Giovanni da san giovanni
1592-1636 Italian painter and draughtman. He was the most distinguished of the artists working in fresco in 17th-century Florence. An eccentric personality, he was attracted by the charm and informality of northern art and by a satirical approach to Classical themes. He went to Florence in 1608 to study in the workshop of Matteo Rosselli, where he learnt both fresco and oil painting techniques and drew extensively (Baldinucci). In 1615 he painted two ceiling canvases of Putti Supporting the Impresa of Michelangelo for a room in the Casa Buonarroti and in the same period frescoed the dome of the church of the Ognissanti, Florence (completed 1615), with a choir of musician angels. He also painted five lunettes showing scenes from the Life of St Francis in the cloister (completed 1619; in situ). In 1616 his frescoed decoration of an Allegory of Florence (destr.; preparatory drawing, Florence, Uffizi, G.D.S. U. 1122F) on the fa?ade of Cosimo II de' Medici's house in Piazza della Calza won him unexpected and lasting fame. His early works also included several tabernacles, made for patrons in the town and in the surrounding countryside. The Virgin and Child with Saints